~ A sabbatical, a quest, and a dream wrapped up in an open-ended, singlehanded sailing voyage; to unplug, to regain focus and reconnect with my creative soul's Muse. I will be out there writing soon! A small sailboat on the big blue, Sine Metu.

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Quotes that Inspire

Don’t ever be afraid to live, laugh and love with every breath and every heartbeat; be afraid—be very afraid—to not.

JB

As a writer, I see words as dialog on a sheet of paper in my mind, sort of like how the trained eye of a photographer is always composing pictures as he looks around. I am in love with the craft of writing so that’s the way I see the world on good days. Writing days. I also read everything I get my hands on.

I love how other writers, whatever the genre, craft their words. From the mouths of babes to the scripted lines delivered by an actor, from hallowed literature throughout the ages to someone’s random blog posted just this morning, from lofty poets to lyrics of songs I can’t get out of my mind, phrases catch my eye. And while music forever remains my drug of choice, writing is the melody that fuels my soul. So, from now on, when something special catches my eye and inspires me to write, to sail or to simply live in the moment, I will copy and credit them here. As this list grows I hope you will come back from time to tim and that you, too, will find them inspirational for whatever craft colors your world.

Quotes that have caught my eye and my heart.

“Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down.”

“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”

Henry David Thoreau

“The cure for anything is saltwater … sweat, tears or the sea”

Isak Dinesen

“You know what the first rule of sailing is? Love. You can learn all the math in the ‘verse, but you take a boat to the sea you don’t love, she’ll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her cruising when she oughta ground, tells you she’s hurting ‘fore she keens. Makes her a home.”

Capt. Malcolm Reynolds

“That’s all can expect of a man, this side of the grave: His good is — knowing he is bad.”

Robert Browning

“The snotgreen sea. The scrotum tightening sea.”

James Joyce

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I…I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Robert Frost

“Nothing is impossible for any of us if we want to do it enough to pay the price. The price being whatever it takes to accomplish the goal. Nothing pays off like tenacity, belief in yourself and enthusiasm. People either let things happen to them or they make things happen. Take your pick.”

David Clark

At age 70, earned the title of,

“The Oldest Man to Sail Solo Around the World.”

“Wherever we want to go, we go. That’s what a ship is, you know.

It’s not just a keel and hull and a deck and sails. That’s what a ship needs.

But what a ship is… what the Black Pearl really is…

is freedom.”

Captain Jack Sparrow

“The last thing you want to is to be sitting on your death bed with all your dreams standing around asking, why you taking us with you? So many people do that…so many people think your dreams have deadlines…but they don’t.”

L.L. Cool J

There is a life-force within your soul, seek that life. There is a gem in the mountain of your body, seek that mine. O traveler, if you are in search of That Don’t look outside, look inside yourself and seek That. This aloneness is worth more than a thousand lives. This freedom is worth more than all the lands on earth. To be one with the truth for just a moment, Is worth more than the world and life itself.

Rumi Poetry

Translations by Shahram Shiva

(From the book, Rumi, Thief of Sleep)

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.

Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.”

Helen Keller

Who Knows What The Future Will Bring

“Tis said of every individual that they can shape their own destiny Though others will tell you quite differently and with such thinking would not agree Who knows what will happen tomorrow who knows what your future will bring Though at present you feel a bit ordinary and none other your praises do sing.

You may try to shape your own destiny without taking circumstance into account And you may have great plans for the future and to little that too can amount To if destiny does not point in that direction your destiny and circumstance Does play a huge part in your future our gift of life came about by chance.

Who knows what will happen tomorrow you may feel sad and tearful today Tonight you may win first division tattslotto and you can celebrate in a big way Or tomorrow for you than today little different with your same set of worries and woes As Shaw once said ‘Life’s Not Meant To Be Easy’ but such is life one must suppose.

Who knows what the future will bring to you despite what some say it does seem to me That we cannot look into the future such things are beyond us to see Those things known as circumstance and destiny a huge part in our lives do play And these two can make us or break us for in our future they have a big say.”

Francis Duggan

“We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Lord Alfred Tennyson

“The difference between an adventure and an ordeal is attitude.”

Bob Bitchin

The wind came blowing blithely from the southwest…

“…and stepped into the folds of our sail like a winged horse, pulling with a strong and steady impulse. The sail bends gently to the breeze, as swells some generous impulse of the heart, and anon flutters and flaps with a Lind of human suspense. I could watch the motions of a sail forever, they are so rich and full of meaning. I watch the play of its pulse, as if it were my own blood beating there.“

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Henry David Thoreau

“On the subject of lightning protection, there is only one thing that works;

Hoist a 1 Iron straight up the mast…not even God can hit a 1 Iron.”

Author Unknown

The Secret of the Sea

Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me As I gaze upon the sea! All the old romantic legends, All my dreams, come back to me.

Sails of silk and ropes of sandal, Such as gleam in ancient lore; And the singing of the sailors, And the answer from the shore!

Most of all, the Spanish ballad Haunts me oft, and tarries long, Of the noble Count Arnaldos And the sailor’s mystic song.

Like the long waves on a sea-beach, Where the sand as silver shines, With a soft, monotonous cadence, Flow its unrhymed lyric lines:–

Telling how the Count Arnaldos, With his hawk upon his hand, Saw a fair and stately galley, Steering onward to the land;–

How he heard the ancient helmsman Chant a song so wild and clear, That the sailing sea-bird slowly Poised upon the mast to hear,

Till his soul was full of longing, And he cried, with impulse strong,– “Helmsman! for the love of heaven, Teach me, too, that wondrous song!”

“Wouldst thou,”–so the helmsman answered, “Learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery!”

In each sail that skims the horizon, In each landward-blowing breeze, I behold that stately galley, Hear those mournful melodies;

Till my soul is full of longing For the secret of the sea, And the heart of the great ocean Sends a thrilling pulse through me.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Seaside and the Fireside

“The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”

“When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.”

Jacques Yves Cousteau

“Twenty years from now you’ll be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Mark Twain

You know what’s out there? Wind and rain, and some damn big waves, reefs and rocks, sandbars, and enough fog and night to hide it all.”

“So why the hell do it?”

“It builds character Mr. Preston of which you are in desperately short supply. The kind you only find on mountaintops, and deserts, and battlefields, and across oceans.”

White Squall

I really don’t know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it is because in addition to the fact that the sea changes and the light changes, and ships change, it is because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it we are going back from whence we came.

John F. Kennedy’s 1962 speech to America’s Cup competitors.

The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time… Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work.

Hemingway

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

Muhammad Ali

Because when you’re this close to realizing a dream, you just have to push through the hard parts.”